Zelensky Shockingly Offers to Drop Ukraine NATO Bid in Peace Deal

Yves Herman, Pool Photo via AP

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has dropped his country’s long-held goal of joining NATO amid ongoing peace negotiations with Russia, he announced Sunday.

The new development came as Zelensky met with President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in Brussels over the weekend at a set of continued talks to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, hosted by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

Before meeting for over five hours with the US envoys, Zelensky told journalists via WhatsApp that he was willing to drop Ukraine’s bid to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – a goal the nation has cherished since the early 2000s.

“From the very beginning, Ukraine’s conditions – or perhaps more accurately, our ambition – was NATO membership,” said Zelensky. “And that would have provided real security guarantees. Some partners from the United States and Europe did not support this direction.”

President Zelensky announced that Ukraine was forgoing its NATO bid in exchange for similar Western security guarantees, noting that “this already is a compromise.”

“That is why today the bilateral security guarantees between Ukraine and the United States, specifically Article 5–like guarantees from the United States for us, and the security guarantees from our European colleagues for us, as well as from other countries such as Canada and Japan – these security guarantees for us provide an opportunity to prevent another outbreak of Russian aggression,” he said. “And this already is a compromise on our part.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has consistently characterized Ukraine’s NATO ambitions as a threat to security, citing it as a primary justification for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Renouncing the bid has remained a continued demand from Putin’s government through peace negotiations, and Zelensky’s announcement marks just the latest instance of talks seeming to favor a more Russian agenda.

Scrutiny on the peace process increased sharply last month, when a proposed U.S. deal sparked outrage after several American senators said Secretary of State Marco Rubio told them the plan was not Trump’s idea, but rather a “wish list” from the Russians that was leaked to the press.

Days later, a bombshell report from Reuters claimed the Trump administration’s 28-point plan was indeed based on a “Russian-authored paper submitted to the Trump administration in October.”

Ukraine countered with its own plan, and talks are set to continue on Monday.

Witkoff said after the meeting that  “a lot of progress was made,” but did not reveal any details of the discussions.